My mom had this story she would tell about how she went to sleep one Friday night and slept all the way until Sunday – missed a whole Saturday. As she told it, she was working during the day in the small- town East Texas County Clerk’s office processing court filings and in the night in the title abstract office typing abstracts at some “cents” per day that I can no longer remember. She was saving to pay off a plot of land on which she would later get financing to build a house for herself and her mother. You know that impression we have of the career women from that generation, you know tough, too tough to be feminine? That was not my mom. She was feminine and quiet to a fault. Nevertheless, she was tenacious. And as for this massive use of her time that would cause her to sleep through an entire Saturday, this was long before I would come along; I mean when in that day was there time for such things as … my dad? But no matter, my dad wasn’t yet in the small towns of East Texas.

My dad’s story of that time, the days of the Korean War, was that he peeled potatoes during his service in the army after being drafted out of college. That’s not what he did, but I suppose the gravity of what my scientist-father did for the nuclear effort was too much for my tender ears. And my dad is a modest man. It’s perfectly fine if I were to believe for the many years that I did that he peeled potatoes, and I suppose that job he did not have more aptly represents my father’s retrospective view of his work of that era.

My own Memorial Day memories started when my family returned to the U.S. after our time in Canada. I was 13 by this time, the summer of some year I won’t admit. One of the selling points to this move to the U.S, at least for our dad, was our uncle Glen. Glen was a quiet man, softly brilliant, an inventor for the chemical company he grew to loath, just as his father was for the steel company he came to loath, with a Navy tattoo on his upper arm. I don’t recall my uncle ever talking about his service, but my dad said Glen was on a boat in the Pacific. My uncle’s was the first tattoo I would ever see, and it didn’t seem to match my impressions of my conservative family. Back to the selling point of my uncle, my uncle had bought a house, so my dad said, and it was on the coast. It was a year after the move before we would visit that house. Later in my life I would refer to this house as my family’s house, mostly because my dad literally built it about three times after hurricanes. That house was truly a family endeavor.

We visited that house for the first time the Memorial Day holiday of my seventh grade year, and then every Memorial Day holiday after. I would say the first time was the best, but there was no best to that place. It was always the best. It was big house, one of about four on an inlet lake from the Intercoastal Canal to the back and the ocean past a small salt creek in dunes to the side. It had a deck on the roof, and you could see forever. It was on an island, one of the barrier islands of Texas, but this island was raw and undeveloped, with access only by a draw bridge. If anyone has ever experienced travel by draw bridge, you know the access favors the ships, and that means you would arrive with all you needed for the weekend and not plan to leave because waiting an hour or more at the bridge was not unusual. There was one restaurant on the island, bordering the canal on the beach side. The view over the canal was of another very populated beach, a complete dichotomy between our side of undeveloped nothingness and that side full of people doing the normal party activities on the beach. Other than that restaurant, there was nothing on the island to do.

It was night when we arrived that first time. I could hear the ocean and sense where it was from the house, but couldn’t see it. My dad told us it would be there in the morning, and to go to sleep. Sleep, ha! Not for a girl who had never seen the ocean. Not for her brother and sister who had never seen the ocean. But sleep we did, and I mean crazy sleep, produced by a combination of the best air conditioning ever and the ocean sounds.

I remember waking up to sounds. We had slept in past our parents. I looked out the window. We all did, seeing the ocean out of the top of the window over the top of the dunes. We would rush upstairs to the deck to see it. Oddly, that memory is always the same – night arrival, belief that we would wake up early, sleeping late because of the sounds … and the amazing air conditioning, going upstairs on the deck, then later heading over to the beach. We had other times of fishing and crab-catching (whatever the word is for that) in the back lake. One time my brother and I filled up an entire boat with crabs. We had times of listening to the stories of our parents and our uncle and aunt. We had walks, sometimes to collect sea shells, the very same ones I have kept for decades. We had the family sit-down to watch the Indy 500 (we all built cars, so that was a must). For a time, my uncle had a small airplane too, and would fly us over the other populous beaches. But what it never was … was a party. I never, ever went to a party on Memorial Day. We would walk to the one restaurant for a burger and see parties over the water of the Intercoastal Canal, but I never went there. Even as we grew older and went to the island with our friends instead of our parents, there no real parties. Sure our friends would anticipate going to some party or over to the other party beach at night, but it never happened. It never happened because Quintana Island drew everyone in with its isolation, its sounds, its calmness, its nature, its love. It was so much better than any party.

I wonder if my time on the island as a teen and then as a young adult, tempered my view of Memorial Day. I wonder if the amazing ability to sleep influenced my desire to make this holiday all about rest. Whatever it is or was, that seems to be the purpose of this weekend for me. On any other normal weekend day, I never sleep past the early morning hours, no matter what time I go to sleep. But this past Saturday, I literally dragged myself out of a deep sleep at almost 11:00 a.m. I am pretty sure if I hadn’t, I would have slept all the way until Sunday morning. Perhaps my working essentially two jobs over the past nine months was the reason, much like my mom all those years ago, or perhaps somewhere in the reaches of my mind, I can smell the salt air of Quintana Island. Perhaps Memorial Day, for me, will always be the quiet holiday in my own special place protected by the difficult access of a draw bridge while everyone else in the known world partied across the canal. Whichever it is, I give thanks for that memory… a memory that will never be again.

Quintana is gone. The house was destroyed by Hurricane Ike. Even the salt lake behind the house was forever altered by the ravages of that storm, mostly filled in with the sands of the dunes that washed over the house. And worse, industry swooped in, first replacing the draw bridge with an overhead bridge, then building a plant seven stories tall making noise that covers the sound of the ocean, then purchasing every house and lot to convert the island to a horrible wasteland, so that the company owner can buy the largest house ever sold in the Hamptons, bragging on his website about his accomplishments. I suppose Quintana wasn’t good enough for him. He would rather have mega mansion with large hedgerows than a natural dune bird sanctuary for a side yard. As for Quintana, I only recently found this out, searching but finding no listings for any houses any longer for rent on Quintana. I can only hope the birds found a new home.

So …this Memorial Day, as I sleep way too much, I give thanks to all veterans, and specifically to my late uncle for his service and for his awesome Navy tattoo, to my dad, who peeled potatoes, to my late mom who did not serve but who worked two jobs so that all her time would be taken up essentially waiting for my dad to show up in her small town, and last but not least, to an Island, that will remain forever perfect in my memories, the first of my Memorial Day memories in this country.

And someday… someway, I’m going to build a place, I’m not sure where, I’m not sure how, but a place where all my family and loved ones can come to hang out on Memorial Day, a place so much better than any party ever could be, a place as special to me as Quintana. Or then again… earlier this year, I did buy an Airstream… and there’s always July 4^th…. Now if only I can find an island accessible only by a draw bridge….